For that, we have one militant anti-bike activist to thank. Ron Anderson sued the city for failing to submit an Environmental Impact Report—required when a project is likely to harm the environment—for its bike improvement plans.

The city recently submitted an iron-clad EIR designed to ward off additional litigiousness from Mr. Anderson, who has too much time and money on his hands. The injunction on bike improvements will be lifted in mid-2009.

In the meantime, the city must petition to be allowed make any changes. District Attorney Dennis Herrera recently filed such a petition, but it turns out it is to remove a dedicated bike lane at Octavia and Market—one of the most dangerous intersections in town, and one at which, if you’re on a bike, you most definitely do not want to be sharing a lane with cars flying off the highway.

Ask the city for an explanation of its bizarre request in a city with the largest bike lobby in the nation. (Tip: I joined SFBC last year to get 10 percent off my purchases at Rainbow Grocery and several bike shops; the membership pays for itself.)

Good news: Anytime you find yourself struggling to find bike parking, you can submit the address and a request for more parking directly to the city. They’ll be putting in thousands of new bike racks when the injunction is lifted.

Anytime I blog on cycling, however, I also make a plea to those few wild bikers out there who pass on the left, don’t use bike lights, ride on the wrong side of the road, or are just bike messengers generally jerks. Please don’t make it tough on the rest of us. When you create antagonistic relationships with drivers, the rest of us pay.

But this plea must also be accompanied by one to drivers: You’re operating multi-ton lethal weapons. Please pay attention. You may not always like what bikes do (see above), but their actions don’t justify attempted murder, which is what 2-inch drive-bys, cutoffs, and gunned engines amount to.

Finally, a note to city planners: Look at the map of the car/non-car accidents and you’ll be veritably hit over the head with a pattern. Market St. is bad, bad, bad. Shared bike/car lanes don’t work, and Market is such a nightmare for everyone that no one is at their best. Please consider major reforms to traffic patterns on the street.

Share your ideas (constructive, please!) for better road-sharing among cars, bikes, and pedestrians in the comments.